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So this cart, I told him, it's about 4 feet long—actually it's exactly 53 inches and three eighths but I didn't want to waste time with that kind of detail—so I just gestured to him, about like this big? You got me?
I told him it's not like any of your carts here at El Centro, it's not metal, no es metal...
My Spanish is worth shit, it's a total fucking joke that I'm trying to mount a show in this place...
It's made of wood, I said, two by fours, de madera, dos por cuatro...
Shit, I thought, this is getting nowhere, I tried to sketch it in the air with my hands, it's tall and thin like this, and the one piece at an angle, like this, and it's covered with old carpeting, cubierta con moqueta...
Look, I said, it's my cart, I made it, it's for moving paintings, and I left it right here about ten minutes ago.
By this time Erasmo had come up, he's the kid who's been helping me hang the show, a sharp kid, a talented artist, actually he's the one getting paid to hang the show, it’s a dual exhibition, me and that guy from LA, which means I'm the fucking unpaid supervisor on this project. Don't get me wrong, shit, even if El Centro had a pro gallery director on staff, I'd want to hang my own show, and I like working with Erasmo, he listens, like when I tell him about the math of hanging paintings, I mean he's smart enough to know what he fucking doesn't know, know what I mean?
So I told Erasmo the cart was missing, and he turned to the maintenance guy, Curro, his name is, and they talked for a while in Spanish, way too fast for me to follow but not half as fast as Curro talks to the other guys from Venezuela, and finally Erasmo turns to me and tells me that Curro saw the cart, a few minutes ago, the nurse lady took it.
The nurse lady? I said. You mean that gray-haired white lady?
Si, Si, says Curro, and he starts laughing, and the only words I can catch after that are la educación sexual and jovenas, and then Erasmo translates for me that the nurse lady took the cart so she could move her posters for the class she's teaching.
Those foam-core posters? I said. The ones that were over there?
I walked over to the place and pointed, to make sure Curro knew what I meant, because I sure as hell wasn't going to try to translate "foam-core" into Spanish.
Curro nodded.
What the fuck! I said. That cart is for moving stretched canvas oil paintings—what the fuck does she need my cart for to move foam-core posters that don't weigh a goddamn thing!
And Curro backed away like he thought I was about to start a fight, and I thought, oh shit, no, no, this isn't happening. Here I am fucking things up with the community and the opening is the day after tomorrow!
It was a fucking awkward moment. I started to tell Erasmo to tell Curro that I didn't have a problem with him or El Centro—I just couldn't understand why that white lady—
But Erasmo gave me a look and said, take it easy, man, take it easy. So I took a deep breath and stepped back. Then Erasmo said something to Curro, and Curro glanced at me, just once, kind of wary, and started mopping the gym floor again.
Then Erasmo told me he was going to the classroom to get the cart back, and he'd meet me at the loading dock. So I said okay, and Erasmo went off, and Curro kept mopping the floor. I stood there for a moment, but Curro wouldn't look at me, so I made my way to the loading dock. There were three crates waiting for us—from that gay Latino painter in LA. Two fucking days late. We had a lot of work to do, Erasmo and me.
He's a smart kid, Erasmo. A talented artist. A good listener.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Dorothy, January 12, 2008
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St. Stanislaus Parish, $1,820. They always send her a receipt, first thing every January, which is nice, but Dorothy takes out a calculator and adds it up anyway. $35 a week. You wouldn't think it would come to that total, the sevens turning into sixes, but somehow it does. Is it still the right amount? Dorothy reaches across the dining room table, and finds a hand-written sheet on one of the stacks of paper. In 2007, her gross income was about $36,000, what with Social Security, her mutual funds, and the annuitized payment from her husband's life insurance, about a thousand more than the year before, the mutual funds did a little better this last year, so for this year Dorothy will continue to follow Father Wilkes' formula, and start putting checks for $36 in the envelope each week. One dollar more each week, it doesn't really seem to matter, except when you look at yourself in the mirror, that's what Father Wilkes used to say. His formula was simple—however many thousands of dollars you made last year, before taxes, give that many dollars weekly to the parish. He called it "half-tithing." Father Wilkes expected that you would tithe, of course, but he only expected that half of your tithe would go to your church. Dorothy liked that—the acknowledgment that her other giving was, well, valid. It wasn't the only reason Dorothy had stopped attending her suburban parish in the 1980's, and started driving in to St. Stanislaus, in the old Polish neighborhood near downtown, where because of her name, Shepanski, everyone thought she was one of the old-time parishioners coming back, but of course she wasn't, her maiden name was Sullivan, and Walter had come from Pittsburgh, not from any parish around here. No, it wasn't the only reason, but it was part of it. Her old pastor had looked at every other charity in the world as competition, practically enemies. Father Wilkes had been so much more reasonable. Dorothy still liked Father Wilkes, in spite of everything. Centro de Barrio Lange, $125. Dorothy has found the shoebox where she keeps the notes she writes herself about her charitable donations. She takes out a new sheet of paper and begins to add them up. Friends of the Parks, $100. It still upsets Dorothy that the county won't keep up the parks the way they used to, it offends her to be asked for money to support something that tax dollars ought to take care of, but Dorothy gives anyway, the parks are too important. Northern Day School, $100. Samantha's school, too rich for Dorothy's blood, but she feels obligated to contribute something, a school like that, she wonders if they get annoyed at $100 checks, the way waitresses get annoyed if you leave pennies on the table. Public Radio, $100. The young man on the phone allowed as how the station would take any amount, but he kept talking about their minimum suggested donation of $75. Then as soon as Dorothy agreed to the $75, the slippery young fellow tried to talk her into upgrading to the $150 level, saying how at that level she would get a discount card that she could apply to various cultural events around town. Dorothy let him read her the list, but the only one Dorothy would be interested in was the Repertory Theatre, and she and Louise already had season tickets to that. So after half an hour of discussion with the young man, Dorothy proposed a compromise—instead of $75, she would give $100, sort of a $25 tip, and they could keep the discount card for someone who wanted to go to the symphony, and the nice young man eventually agreed that was good solution. Public Television, $160. Dorothy shakes her head as she reads the note, how ridiculous these so-called "gifts" are! For her donation, she received a set of four "Comfort Food" cookbooks as a thank you, and a note telling her she must reduce her IRS deduction by $40 for "fair market value." Well, she thinks, the IRS can figure it any way they want, for her own personal purposes the donation was $160, those cookbooks weren't worth a damn anyway. Catholic Relief Services, $75, Doctors without Borders, $50, American Friends Service Committee, $50. She doesn't know which one does the most good, so she spreads it around, her little bit. Save the Children, $336. $28 a month for the child in Sierra Leone. Her friend Louise sponsors a child too, and Louise puts the photos and letters and drawings from the child on the refrigerator. Dorothy can't do that—the shame of having so much more overwhelms her. She reads the letters, looks at the pictures, then puts them in a drawer. Tangled Bank Nature Center, $250. Louise had suggested the two of them make their gifts in memory of Professor Jorgensen, but Dorothy had quietly refused. St. Stanislaus Stained Glass Restoration Fund, $75. It had broken Father Wilkes's heart to have to cover those gorgeous windows with Plexiglas. Dorothy didn't care much for the new pastor, Fr. Knoll, but this was one project where she had to support him. American Heart Association, $300. Walter died in 1968 at the age of 47. She was 42. Gary was only 12. In the late 1980s, she had opened a mailing from the American Heart Association, asking her to make a donation in the memory of her late husband. She threw the mailer away, offended. How did they know he had died of a heart attack? And how did they track her down, twenty years after the event? But the next year, the mailer came again, and this time she put it on the table. Maybe she should call them, and complain. The next day, when she was volunteering in the rectory office, she took a coffee break with Father Wilkes. She told him about the mailer, how offended and angry it made her. She had never considered that her husband had died of a disease, simply that he had died and left her, that's the way it was. At the end of the coffee break, Father Wilkes gave her absolution. Father, she told him, I wasn't going to confession. Yes you were, he said. He suggested she join a widows group. She resisted. It was so long ago, she told him, I've been widow for twenty years. He kept urging her. She finally joined. She didn't like most of the ladies, especially the ones who made whatever disease their husbands had died from into a cause. Death was just death, she thought to herself, not a personal insult. Eventually she spoke up and said so to the group. The other women didn't know what to say. But they weren't all bad, the widows. There were some women she didn't mind listening to, the ones who were having troubles with their kids now that the fathers were gone. She tried to tell them what Gary had been like in high school, how he had always been in trouble with school, but never in trouble with her, not really. Maybe some of the women understood. There was one other "veteran" in the group, a woman, like her, who had been widowed a long time. That was Louise, the beginning of a friendship. Anyway Dorothy had kept going to the group for several months, until they changed the time and it didn't fit into her schedule anymore. And the next year, when the begging letter from the American Heart Association came, Dorothy made a memorial in her husband's name. And every year since.
St. Stanislaus Parish, $1,820. They always send her a receipt, first thing every January, which is nice, but Dorothy takes out a calculator and adds it up anyway. $35 a week. You wouldn't think it would come to that total, the sevens turning into sixes, but somehow it does. Is it still the right amount? Dorothy reaches across the dining room table, and finds a hand-written sheet on one of the stacks of paper. In 2007, her gross income was about $36,000, what with Social Security, her mutual funds, and the annuitized payment from her husband's life insurance, about a thousand more than the year before, the mutual funds did a little better this last year, so for this year Dorothy will continue to follow Father Wilkes' formula, and start putting checks for $36 in the envelope each week. One dollar more each week, it doesn't really seem to matter, except when you look at yourself in the mirror, that's what Father Wilkes used to say. His formula was simple—however many thousands of dollars you made last year, before taxes, give that many dollars weekly to the parish. He called it "half-tithing." Father Wilkes expected that you would tithe, of course, but he only expected that half of your tithe would go to your church. Dorothy liked that—the acknowledgment that her other giving was, well, valid. It wasn't the only reason Dorothy had stopped attending her suburban parish in the 1980's, and started driving in to St. Stanislaus, in the old Polish neighborhood near downtown, where because of her name, Shepanski, everyone thought she was one of the old-time parishioners coming back, but of course she wasn't, her maiden name was Sullivan, and Walter had come from Pittsburgh, not from any parish around here. No, it wasn't the only reason, but it was part of it. Her old pastor had looked at every other charity in the world as competition, practically enemies. Father Wilkes had been so much more reasonable. Dorothy still liked Father Wilkes, in spite of everything. Centro de Barrio Lange, $125. Dorothy has found the shoebox where she keeps the notes she writes herself about her charitable donations. She takes out a new sheet of paper and begins to add them up. Friends of the Parks, $100. It still upsets Dorothy that the county won't keep up the parks the way they used to, it offends her to be asked for money to support something that tax dollars ought to take care of, but Dorothy gives anyway, the parks are too important. Northern Day School, $100. Samantha's school, too rich for Dorothy's blood, but she feels obligated to contribute something, a school like that, she wonders if they get annoyed at $100 checks, the way waitresses get annoyed if you leave pennies on the table. Public Radio, $100. The young man on the phone allowed as how the station would take any amount, but he kept talking about their minimum suggested donation of $75. Then as soon as Dorothy agreed to the $75, the slippery young fellow tried to talk her into upgrading to the $150 level, saying how at that level she would get a discount card that she could apply to various cultural events around town. Dorothy let him read her the list, but the only one Dorothy would be interested in was the Repertory Theatre, and she and Louise already had season tickets to that. So after half an hour of discussion with the young man, Dorothy proposed a compromise—instead of $75, she would give $100, sort of a $25 tip, and they could keep the discount card for someone who wanted to go to the symphony, and the nice young man eventually agreed that was good solution. Public Television, $160. Dorothy shakes her head as she reads the note, how ridiculous these so-called "gifts" are! For her donation, she received a set of four "Comfort Food" cookbooks as a thank you, and a note telling her she must reduce her IRS deduction by $40 for "fair market value." Well, she thinks, the IRS can figure it any way they want, for her own personal purposes the donation was $160, those cookbooks weren't worth a damn anyway. Catholic Relief Services, $75, Doctors without Borders, $50, American Friends Service Committee, $50. She doesn't know which one does the most good, so she spreads it around, her little bit. Save the Children, $336. $28 a month for the child in Sierra Leone. Her friend Louise sponsors a child too, and Louise puts the photos and letters and drawings from the child on the refrigerator. Dorothy can't do that—the shame of having so much more overwhelms her. She reads the letters, looks at the pictures, then puts them in a drawer. Tangled Bank Nature Center, $250. Louise had suggested the two of them make their gifts in memory of Professor Jorgensen, but Dorothy had quietly refused. St. Stanislaus Stained Glass Restoration Fund, $75. It had broken Father Wilkes's heart to have to cover those gorgeous windows with Plexiglas. Dorothy didn't care much for the new pastor, Fr. Knoll, but this was one project where she had to support him. American Heart Association, $300. Walter died in 1968 at the age of 47. She was 42. Gary was only 12. In the late 1980s, she had opened a mailing from the American Heart Association, asking her to make a donation in the memory of her late husband. She threw the mailer away, offended. How did they know he had died of a heart attack? And how did they track her down, twenty years after the event? But the next year, the mailer came again, and this time she put it on the table. Maybe she should call them, and complain. The next day, when she was volunteering in the rectory office, she took a coffee break with Father Wilkes. She told him about the mailer, how offended and angry it made her. She had never considered that her husband had died of a disease, simply that he had died and left her, that's the way it was. At the end of the coffee break, Father Wilkes gave her absolution. Father, she told him, I wasn't going to confession. Yes you were, he said. He suggested she join a widows group. She resisted. It was so long ago, she told him, I've been widow for twenty years. He kept urging her. She finally joined. She didn't like most of the ladies, especially the ones who made whatever disease their husbands had died from into a cause. Death was just death, she thought to herself, not a personal insult. Eventually she spoke up and said so to the group. The other women didn't know what to say. But they weren't all bad, the widows. There were some women she didn't mind listening to, the ones who were having troubles with their kids now that the fathers were gone. She tried to tell them what Gary had been like in high school, how he had always been in trouble with school, but never in trouble with her, not really. Maybe some of the women understood. There was one other "veteran" in the group, a woman, like her, who had been widowed a long time. That was Louise, the beginning of a friendship. Anyway Dorothy had kept going to the group for several months, until they changed the time and it didn't fit into her schedule anymore. And the next year, when the begging letter from the American Heart Association came, Dorothy made a memorial in her husband's name. And every year since.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Melissa, December 17, 2007
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"This has nothing to do with Lisa," said Gary. "It's only because I pretty much fucking built the place."
I nodded. "That’s... what I understand," I said.
"Not the electrical, of course. Or the plumbing. Or the concrete pours. Though I could've done a better job than those assholes the contractor hired."
"It was very generous of you," I said. "I mean, it is, still—"
"Fuck that," said Gary. "There was nothing fucking generous about it. Okay. I'm going out."
He opened the door and walked out into the snow. I looked out at the roof, the snow, the night, the big guy in the jumpsuit.
"Are you all right?" I called after him.
"I'm fine," he called back. "Close the fucking door. You're letting the heat out. It's a fucking green building, remember?"
I closed the door and tried to keep an eye on his progress through the window. Framed by the vertical slit, the scene had become even more disorienting: snowflakes illuminated from below, the hulking figure trudging among the vents and boxes. I saw him tug at something, kick it, then lift the thing, a snowy mass, and toss it into the darkness.
A minute later he was back on the landing, stomping the snow off his jumpsuit.
"Fucking big-assed tree branch," he said. "From the oak tree. Totally blocking the intake. It must've fallen in the windstorm. That was two weeks ago, before the snow. You been having problems that long?"
"Maybe," I said. "I thought it was just winter. I... I just... turned up the thermostat."
"You shouldn't let shit that go that long. You gotta get a regular maintenance man for this place."
The snow was flying off his clothes and boots. I stood as far from him as possible on the little landing.
"I'm working on it," I said. "With the board. It takes time."
The shaking and stomping and brushing stopped. He looked at me.
"Hey," he said. "I'm not getting down on you personally. Sorry if I came on too strong."
"No problem," I said. "It was so great for you to come over and help. I really didn't know who else to call. Let me get you some coffee."
"You're pretty much a volunteer here yourself, aren't you?" he said.
"Sort of," I said. "One of the donors made a deal with the biology department. Next semester my teaching load will be reduced by one class."
"That's not much," he said. "This is a big job here."
"There's a search committee," I said. "Maybe by summer we'll have a new executive director. C'mon, let's get that coffee."
Downstairs, you could already feel the warmth returning. I fixed a cup of coffee for Gary and a hot chocolate for me. We talked about our kids for a while. I asked about Samantha. He said she was trying to find her mother a job. He asked about Jake—how was he handling the steroid scandal in baseball? I said he was trying to use it as an excuse not to take his asthma medicine. Smart kid, he said. Smart at being stupid, I said. Gary had stopped swearing—as if he no longer needed the sparks of profanity to keep him warm.
His eyes wandered around the center for a moment. Builder's eyes. The same attention to detail that a biologist brings to the field, but something else, too. More willful.
"You did all the carpentry?" I said.
"Yeah," he said. "The rough and the finish."
"You did a great job," I said. "It must be difficult for you, now that Lisa—"
"Nothing fucking to do with her," he said. "I mean, she was the fucking client, but that wasn't why I did it."
He seemed to want to tell me something, but he wanted me to ask.
"Why then?" I finally said, after a pause.
"Sam's grandpa," he said, after his own pause.
"Raymond?" I said.
"You know," he said. "At the time, I had no fucking clue. Only when I looked back, I could see how old Raymond had put it all together. Know what I mean?"
"I don't quite follow..." I said.
"Look," he said. "This was the early nineties, after the band had finally gone fucking south. There I was, living off the book, no reported income, no visible fucking means of support."
"You were in a band?" I said. "I guess I should have known... from the tatoos."
I smiled awkwardly.
"Yeah," he said. "I was in Arbeit Macht Frei."
"No way!" I said. "My older brother had all your albums. And this disgusting t-shirt.... I thought the band was from West Berlin or Amsterdam or..."
"Someplace cool?" he said. "Nope. Three jews and a polack from right fucking here. Fucking suburbs, actually."
"Wow," I said. "You guys really had a following in Columbus. You were like... grunge before there was grunge."
"Like grunge before there was money," he said. "We toured for ten years. Most of the time we were crashing on our fans' fucking floors. I was telling you a story about Raymond. You wanna hear it?"
"Uh, sure," I said.
The story started with the breakup of the band. He told me how, in its last two years, Arbeit Macht Frei had made a little money and they had all started to hate each other. How he walked away with just enough cash to buy an old crackhouse in Barrio Lange and fix it up. How he built himself a studio and started painting again. How he and Lisa had had a thing. How Lisa had been almost as much of a fringe character as he was back then, this fucking crazy environmentalist chick. How she got pregnant. How she wanted to keep the baby, which surprised the fuck out of Gary. But how he knew she was serious because she quit drinking right away.
Then he leaned forward and gave me a little sociology lesson. He told me how the fucking state comes in and fucks up everyone's lives if a dad can't pay his fucking child support. He leaned back and shook his head. Fucking Lisa had been about to go ahead and apply for fucking welfare anyway.
But that was when Raymond Deveridge, Lisa's dad, whom Gary had never even fucking met before, showed up with a package deal to solve everyone's problems.
Gary lifted his arms and looked around the room.
"You mean the center?" I said. "The Tangled Bank? This was Raymond's idea?"
"Oh, the idea was Lisa's. But you gotta understand, Lisa had lots of fucking ideas. Raymond picked the one he was going to make happen."
The deal took a year or two to play out. Lisa got a job running the center, Gary got a job building the center, nobody had to get married who didn't fucking want to (the two of them sure as hell didn't), their paychecks were nice and low, but not too low, which looked good for the fundraising, which Raymond took care of, at least in the early years, until Lisa got good at it.
And when Samantha was born, she got a trust fund, with monthly payments right from the start. So the small paychecks didn't matter, because Lisa and Gary didn't have to use those paychecks to support their kid.
Gary paused, to let me catch up. I sat in silence for a moment.
"It's... it's a lot to absorb," I said.
"The trust fund even sends me checks when I take Samantha for the weekends," he said. "Fucking sweet, hey?"
"So that's how this place started," I said. "Kind of a... family thing."
"Hey," he said. "This place is real. Fuck the family drama. That river is real, all the nature is real, you know the science is real, and I can guarantee this building is fucking real."
"I know," I said. "Thanks. For everything. Well, I gotta get home. I have to be back here at 7:30 to unlock the doors for a busload of seventh graders."
I stood and picked up the cups. Gary stood up too.
"Yeah," he said. "I should get back to the studio."
"I'm sorry I had to interrupt you," I said.
"Don't worry," he said. "I never get started before midnight."
"This has nothing to do with Lisa," said Gary. "It's only because I pretty much fucking built the place."
I nodded. "That’s... what I understand," I said.
"Not the electrical, of course. Or the plumbing. Or the concrete pours. Though I could've done a better job than those assholes the contractor hired."
"It was very generous of you," I said. "I mean, it is, still—"
"Fuck that," said Gary. "There was nothing fucking generous about it. Okay. I'm going out."
He opened the door and walked out into the snow. I looked out at the roof, the snow, the night, the big guy in the jumpsuit.
"Are you all right?" I called after him.
"I'm fine," he called back. "Close the fucking door. You're letting the heat out. It's a fucking green building, remember?"
I closed the door and tried to keep an eye on his progress through the window. Framed by the vertical slit, the scene had become even more disorienting: snowflakes illuminated from below, the hulking figure trudging among the vents and boxes. I saw him tug at something, kick it, then lift the thing, a snowy mass, and toss it into the darkness.
A minute later he was back on the landing, stomping the snow off his jumpsuit.
"Fucking big-assed tree branch," he said. "From the oak tree. Totally blocking the intake. It must've fallen in the windstorm. That was two weeks ago, before the snow. You been having problems that long?"
"Maybe," I said. "I thought it was just winter. I... I just... turned up the thermostat."
"You shouldn't let shit that go that long. You gotta get a regular maintenance man for this place."
The snow was flying off his clothes and boots. I stood as far from him as possible on the little landing.
"I'm working on it," I said. "With the board. It takes time."
The shaking and stomping and brushing stopped. He looked at me.
"Hey," he said. "I'm not getting down on you personally. Sorry if I came on too strong."
"No problem," I said. "It was so great for you to come over and help. I really didn't know who else to call. Let me get you some coffee."
"You're pretty much a volunteer here yourself, aren't you?" he said.
"Sort of," I said. "One of the donors made a deal with the biology department. Next semester my teaching load will be reduced by one class."
"That's not much," he said. "This is a big job here."
"There's a search committee," I said. "Maybe by summer we'll have a new executive director. C'mon, let's get that coffee."
Downstairs, you could already feel the warmth returning. I fixed a cup of coffee for Gary and a hot chocolate for me. We talked about our kids for a while. I asked about Samantha. He said she was trying to find her mother a job. He asked about Jake—how was he handling the steroid scandal in baseball? I said he was trying to use it as an excuse not to take his asthma medicine. Smart kid, he said. Smart at being stupid, I said. Gary had stopped swearing—as if he no longer needed the sparks of profanity to keep him warm.
His eyes wandered around the center for a moment. Builder's eyes. The same attention to detail that a biologist brings to the field, but something else, too. More willful.
"You did all the carpentry?" I said.
"Yeah," he said. "The rough and the finish."
"You did a great job," I said. "It must be difficult for you, now that Lisa—"
"Nothing fucking to do with her," he said. "I mean, she was the fucking client, but that wasn't why I did it."
He seemed to want to tell me something, but he wanted me to ask.
"Why then?" I finally said, after a pause.
"Sam's grandpa," he said, after his own pause.
"Raymond?" I said.
"You know," he said. "At the time, I had no fucking clue. Only when I looked back, I could see how old Raymond had put it all together. Know what I mean?"
"I don't quite follow..." I said.
"Look," he said. "This was the early nineties, after the band had finally gone fucking south. There I was, living off the book, no reported income, no visible fucking means of support."
"You were in a band?" I said. "I guess I should have known... from the tatoos."
I smiled awkwardly.
"Yeah," he said. "I was in Arbeit Macht Frei."
"No way!" I said. "My older brother had all your albums. And this disgusting t-shirt.... I thought the band was from West Berlin or Amsterdam or..."
"Someplace cool?" he said. "Nope. Three jews and a polack from right fucking here. Fucking suburbs, actually."
"Wow," I said. "You guys really had a following in Columbus. You were like... grunge before there was grunge."
"Like grunge before there was money," he said. "We toured for ten years. Most of the time we were crashing on our fans' fucking floors. I was telling you a story about Raymond. You wanna hear it?"
"Uh, sure," I said.
The story started with the breakup of the band. He told me how, in its last two years, Arbeit Macht Frei had made a little money and they had all started to hate each other. How he walked away with just enough cash to buy an old crackhouse in Barrio Lange and fix it up. How he built himself a studio and started painting again. How he and Lisa had had a thing. How Lisa had been almost as much of a fringe character as he was back then, this fucking crazy environmentalist chick. How she got pregnant. How she wanted to keep the baby, which surprised the fuck out of Gary. But how he knew she was serious because she quit drinking right away.
Then he leaned forward and gave me a little sociology lesson. He told me how the fucking state comes in and fucks up everyone's lives if a dad can't pay his fucking child support. He leaned back and shook his head. Fucking Lisa had been about to go ahead and apply for fucking welfare anyway.
But that was when Raymond Deveridge, Lisa's dad, whom Gary had never even fucking met before, showed up with a package deal to solve everyone's problems.
Gary lifted his arms and looked around the room.
"You mean the center?" I said. "The Tangled Bank? This was Raymond's idea?"
"Oh, the idea was Lisa's. But you gotta understand, Lisa had lots of fucking ideas. Raymond picked the one he was going to make happen."
The deal took a year or two to play out. Lisa got a job running the center, Gary got a job building the center, nobody had to get married who didn't fucking want to (the two of them sure as hell didn't), their paychecks were nice and low, but not too low, which looked good for the fundraising, which Raymond took care of, at least in the early years, until Lisa got good at it.
And when Samantha was born, she got a trust fund, with monthly payments right from the start. So the small paychecks didn't matter, because Lisa and Gary didn't have to use those paychecks to support their kid.
Gary paused, to let me catch up. I sat in silence for a moment.
"It's... it's a lot to absorb," I said.
"The trust fund even sends me checks when I take Samantha for the weekends," he said. "Fucking sweet, hey?"
"So that's how this place started," I said. "Kind of a... family thing."
"Hey," he said. "This place is real. Fuck the family drama. That river is real, all the nature is real, you know the science is real, and I can guarantee this building is fucking real."
"I know," I said. "Thanks. For everything. Well, I gotta get home. I have to be back here at 7:30 to unlock the doors for a busload of seventh graders."
I stood and picked up the cups. Gary stood up too.
"Yeah," he said. "I should get back to the studio."
"I'm sorry I had to interrupt you," I said.
"Don't worry," he said. "I never get started before midnight."
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Lisa, November 12, 2007
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After lunch, we took a walk in the old German graveyard, and for the first time all day, Sam dropped her sullen act.
"Look Mom, this one died when she was a baby."
She grabbed my hand and pointed to a gravestone.
Margaretha Schwab. Born June 3, 1842. Died August 12, 1842.
"1842," I said. "This was practically the frontier back then. A lot of infant mortality."
"That means babies dying, right?"
"That's right."
We walked toward another gravestone, her hand still in mine.
Hanna Schwab. That must be the mother. Born 1823, Leipzig. Died 1867. Here. That would be...
"Sam, what's sixty-seven minus twenty-three?"
"Forty-four."
My age. When Hanna died. How many more children did you have, Hanna, after losing Margaretha at...
"What's 42 minus 23?"
"Oh god, Mom. Nineteen." She looked at the stone. "You're figuring out how old she was..."
"Yeah."
"The gravestones are so gross," said Sam. "Somebody should clean them."
"Those are lichens," I said. "They grow on the old limestone. The calcium neutralizes the acid rain. It's a good place for them to grow."
"So they shouldn't clean them?"
"I would leave them just the way they are. Graveyards are good for nature."
We strolled quietly among the stones, still hand in hand. Keydel. Otterbein. Baum. Walsch. In England, they teach nature courses in graveyards. Rocks and weathering. Human populations. Biodiversity.
"Mom," said Sam, "are you a Wiccan?"
"I don't think so," I said. "I'm not very religious."
Who needs a nature center? You could hire the buses, set up day tours. Would that work here?
"Grandpa's an Episcopalian," said Sam. "And Dad says he's a half-assed Taoist—"
"Is that so?" I said.
"—and Grandma Shepanski is a Catholic, and that leaves you."
An old truck rumbled by on County E. There must still be a few working farms around here. The driver probably wouldn’t dream of stopping at the old church, now that it's been converted to a little café. What would he make of a busload of eco-tourists? Those old guys have a different relationship with the land—harsh. Hateful, sometimes. But intimate.
Sam tugged at my hand. "Mom! I'm asking you a question! What religion are you?"
"I'm not much of anything," I said. "Are you doing a report for school?"
"No," she said. "I'm just curious. I read a book on religions of the world."
I suppose this place could make you feel religious. Very quiet and peaceful. But then as soon as you think about it—as soon as you focus on the quiet—you can hear the highway. No buzz of transcendence. Just the distant angry roar. What is it? Ten miles away?
"You worship nature, don't you Mom?"
"I don't know about worship. I fight for it sometimes."
The wind shifted a little, and for a moment it filled my ears, masking the sound of the highway. The bleak November wind that Hanna Schwab would have heard, the season after baby Margaretha died, while her husband cleared the land, not primeval forest, but a forest a century or two old, grown unchecked since the European microbes had decimated the native population. You and your husband didn't need to fight the Indians, did you Hanna? Smallpox had done that already.
Sam let go of my hand, and ran off to study something—a few yards away. Under that bush—what is it?
I hope you had a daughter, Hanna. One that lived.
After lunch, we took a walk in the old German graveyard, and for the first time all day, Sam dropped her sullen act.
"Look Mom, this one died when she was a baby."
She grabbed my hand and pointed to a gravestone.
Margaretha Schwab. Born June 3, 1842. Died August 12, 1842.
"1842," I said. "This was practically the frontier back then. A lot of infant mortality."
"That means babies dying, right?"
"That's right."
We walked toward another gravestone, her hand still in mine.
Hanna Schwab. That must be the mother. Born 1823, Leipzig. Died 1867. Here. That would be...
"Sam, what's sixty-seven minus twenty-three?"
"Forty-four."
My age. When Hanna died. How many more children did you have, Hanna, after losing Margaretha at...
"What's 42 minus 23?"
"Oh god, Mom. Nineteen." She looked at the stone. "You're figuring out how old she was..."
"Yeah."
"The gravestones are so gross," said Sam. "Somebody should clean them."
"Those are lichens," I said. "They grow on the old limestone. The calcium neutralizes the acid rain. It's a good place for them to grow."
"So they shouldn't clean them?"
"I would leave them just the way they are. Graveyards are good for nature."
We strolled quietly among the stones, still hand in hand. Keydel. Otterbein. Baum. Walsch. In England, they teach nature courses in graveyards. Rocks and weathering. Human populations. Biodiversity.
"Mom," said Sam, "are you a Wiccan?"
"I don't think so," I said. "I'm not very religious."
Who needs a nature center? You could hire the buses, set up day tours. Would that work here?
"Grandpa's an Episcopalian," said Sam. "And Dad says he's a half-assed Taoist—"
"Is that so?" I said.
"—and Grandma Shepanski is a Catholic, and that leaves you."
An old truck rumbled by on County E. There must still be a few working farms around here. The driver probably wouldn’t dream of stopping at the old church, now that it's been converted to a little café. What would he make of a busload of eco-tourists? Those old guys have a different relationship with the land—harsh. Hateful, sometimes. But intimate.
Sam tugged at my hand. "Mom! I'm asking you a question! What religion are you?"
"I'm not much of anything," I said. "Are you doing a report for school?"
"No," she said. "I'm just curious. I read a book on religions of the world."
I suppose this place could make you feel religious. Very quiet and peaceful. But then as soon as you think about it—as soon as you focus on the quiet—you can hear the highway. No buzz of transcendence. Just the distant angry roar. What is it? Ten miles away?
"You worship nature, don't you Mom?"
"I don't know about worship. I fight for it sometimes."
The wind shifted a little, and for a moment it filled my ears, masking the sound of the highway. The bleak November wind that Hanna Schwab would have heard, the season after baby Margaretha died, while her husband cleared the land, not primeval forest, but a forest a century or two old, grown unchecked since the European microbes had decimated the native population. You and your husband didn't need to fight the Indians, did you Hanna? Smallpox had done that already.
Sam let go of my hand, and ran off to study something—a few yards away. Under that bush—what is it?
I hope you had a daughter, Hanna. One that lived.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Samantha, November 12, 2007
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Parents can get so crazy, they don't even know what they're doing sometimes, they don't listen to anyone, if they don't have a job, that's the worst. Just think about it, I mean if you're a like a kid you've got school to go to, but if you're a Mom and you don't have a job and your last job paid you like a whole year's salary just to go away, then there's no place you have to go where you have to act normal, so you can just stay home and be as crazy as you want and only your kid can see you. I asked my Mom, so when are you going to start looking for a job, and she said she had been working seven days a week at the center since before I was born, she was even signing papers with one hand and holding me on her breast with the other, Mom! I said, but she wouldn't stop, she was still in the hospital, she said, waiting for her milk to come, that's how devoted she had been to the center, and what she needed now was to get in touch with other things in her life, and I'm like okay, whatever, go be a yoga mom, I didn't really say that out loud. So then this morning I'm eating my breakfast like normal and she comes in and makes a big deal of cutting the grapefruit for me and then she starts carving out the little pieces with this weird little knife I'd never seen before, and I'm like Mom, what are you doing, I just dig it out with the spoon, and she said this was the way her mother did it for her, couldn't she do something nice for her daughter once in a while, and then she sprinked brown sugar on both halves of the grapefruit, smashing the clumps with her fingers which is so totally gross and she put each half on a little plate and set a spoon beside it like it was some kind of fancy dish from a chef show on TV, and then handed one of the dishes to me with like a total crazy person's smile. And I'm like, I can't eat that I don't eat sugar, and she said, what do you mean you don't eat sugar, don't you eat candy with your friends, and I'm like no, Mom, no I don't and she said fine, and threw both halves of the grapefruit in the garbage one after another, and walked out of the kitchen. So I put the stupid little plates and the stupid little knife in the dishwasher and I ate my toast and read a few more pages of my book, and then she came back in the kitchen with the phone in her hand and said she had just called my school and told them I wouldn't be coming in today, and I'm like what do you mean, my group is doing a presentation today, and she said, it's okay, I've got it all taken care of, but I'm like Mom! we're doing the rivers of North America, and ours is the Red River, the only one that flows north, but she said it's about time I let some of the other kids do the work, because today we're going for a drive in the country, just the two of us.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Betty, October 21, 2007
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Seeing him at the grocery store—it's surprising, really, now that I look back, that there haven't been more awkward moments. We've been living here, in the same neighborhood, driving on the same streets, for twenty-five years now. Longer than that, of course, especially for him, but twenty-five years since.
"Betty," he said. "How nice to see you."
Our houses are less than a mile apart, but maybe, except for the brief period when we were actually pursuing each other, maybe we live in different worlds, move in different networks. Maybe the gradient in housing, from his sprawling brick tudor, every bedroom with its own bathroom and a few more just for the convenience of one's visitors, down the scale to my tidy bungalow with its vinyl siding—maybe that's the leading indicator of a different social ecosystem—different dry-cleaners, different auto mechanics, different florists. Different friends, that's for sure.
"Raymond," I said. "What a surprise."
And now, after twenty-five years, here in this aisle. My only indulgence—this expensive little store with its great produce section. Why did he show up now? He never did any of his own shopping, I'm know he didn't, even after his wife left him.
"Are you still working?" he said.
"I still have a couple of years to go," I said.
We each had a bottle of red wine in our carts—Australian
"Ah," he said. "About a week ago, I was having lunch with the new Superintendent..."
He paused, inviting me to interrupt. I thought for a moment, then accepted the invitation.
"You asked after me," I said. "That's nice. But the Super wouldn't know me."
He nodded, very thoughtfully, and then, like everyone else, I answered the question he hadn't even asked.
"That administrative job—" I said. "I gave it up a couple of years ago. I'm just a school nurse again. Prospect Elementary. I missed the kids."
"Good for you," he said.
"Yourself?" I said.
"Well, my name's still on the shingle," he said. "And my former partners let me use my old office. I sit on several boards, and there's an old client or two who insist on occasionally giving me a call."
"Are these any good?" he said.
When did he become interested in ingredients? I shrugged my shoulders.
"I was reading recently," I said, "about your daughter. You're on the board of that nature center, aren't you?"
"Yes," he said, "that was difficult. But it's a wonderful organization, still very much worthy of my support. And Lisa will certainly find a new project. I'm very grateful to her for getting me involved with the Tangled Bank in the first place."
How does he do it? He could walk out of prize fight and make it sound as if the knockout was the first step toward an amicable partnership.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Arthur, September 28, 2007
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Dorothy needed someone to take her shift at the center, there was a funeral she had to go to, Louise's friend Marian or Marianne or something like that, I'd never met the woman, not much point in me going to the funeral, so I said, Sure, I'll take your shift. Volunteer Greeter, they call it, you just sit by the door and say hello to anyone who comes in, they want the center to be open to drop-bys, even the teenagers in the park, and apparently having an old fart at the door prevents vandalism, I don't know how, I sure as hell couldn't stop those teenagers from indulging their destructive tendencies if they were so inclined, but you know, it works, you just look 'em in the eye and say Welcome to the Tangled Bank, have a look around, and the kids calm right down. That's only when they come in, of course, the rest of the time you're on your own, this was the 3 to 6 p.m. shift and there was one kid playing the ecology video game for a while but then his friends came and got him and that was that. When the place was empty I walked around, straightened up a little, I wasn't going to get out the spray bottle like Dorothy does but I do my part. I found a book on one of the tables and I was going to put it back on the shelf where it belonged but it wasn't a science or nature or ecology book, it was some sort of adventure book for girls, Wilhelmina and the Cro-Magnon Cave, maybe it was Cavern, I figured it must belong to that girl, the daughter of the director, she was always hanging around reading, kind of a sullen girl, but maybe all girls are sullen at that age, about the same age Betty was when she decided the neighbor lady was her best friend, going over there every night to help her with her collections, never understood what that was about, tearing pages out of magazines and cataloging them, now I don't think that neighbor lady was a bad influence, what was her name? there were a lot of people in Terre Haute who worked at the Federal Prison, we were very tolerant of those occupations, still a forty-year-old divorced woman, what was she? A nurse? A librarian? hell, I suppose she was alright, a little eccentric, said my wife, and Betty will have plenty of time for boys later on. I read a few pages of the book, there was nothing else to do, I didn't expect it to be be my cup of tea, but they got right to the cave drawings, I've always been partial to cave drawings, and it was set in 1918, the year I was born, Austria or Switzerland or some such place, but then they came out of the cave and went back to the boarding school and started giggling and that was enough of that book for me. A few minutes later the director came down the stairs, carrying one of those white bankers boxes, I didn't have any idea she was up there in her office, she must have been working there the whole time. I offered to carry the box for her, it never hurts to make the gesture, and she stopped and looked at me funny and eventually smiled and said no, no thanks, she had it under control. So I showed her the book and she said, Yes, that would be Samantha's, and I put on top of her box for her and asked if she would be locking up at six o'clock because I didn't have any keys. Then she finally put the box down and found some keys in her pocket and handed them to me and said that I could lock up, that would be good, and she picked up her box with book balanced on top and headed for the door, kind of in a hurry I'd say, but I called after her and asked, What should I do with the keys? and she turned and said I could keep the keys, for all she cared, because she didn't work there anymore.
Dorothy needed someone to take her shift at the center, there was a funeral she had to go to, Louise's friend Marian or Marianne or something like that, I'd never met the woman, not much point in me going to the funeral, so I said, Sure, I'll take your shift. Volunteer Greeter, they call it, you just sit by the door and say hello to anyone who comes in, they want the center to be open to drop-bys, even the teenagers in the park, and apparently having an old fart at the door prevents vandalism, I don't know how, I sure as hell couldn't stop those teenagers from indulging their destructive tendencies if they were so inclined, but you know, it works, you just look 'em in the eye and say Welcome to the Tangled Bank, have a look around, and the kids calm right down. That's only when they come in, of course, the rest of the time you're on your own, this was the 3 to 6 p.m. shift and there was one kid playing the ecology video game for a while but then his friends came and got him and that was that. When the place was empty I walked around, straightened up a little, I wasn't going to get out the spray bottle like Dorothy does but I do my part. I found a book on one of the tables and I was going to put it back on the shelf where it belonged but it wasn't a science or nature or ecology book, it was some sort of adventure book for girls, Wilhelmina and the Cro-Magnon Cave, maybe it was Cavern, I figured it must belong to that girl, the daughter of the director, she was always hanging around reading, kind of a sullen girl, but maybe all girls are sullen at that age, about the same age Betty was when she decided the neighbor lady was her best friend, going over there every night to help her with her collections, never understood what that was about, tearing pages out of magazines and cataloging them, now I don't think that neighbor lady was a bad influence, what was her name? there were a lot of people in Terre Haute who worked at the Federal Prison, we were very tolerant of those occupations, still a forty-year-old divorced woman, what was she? A nurse? A librarian? hell, I suppose she was alright, a little eccentric, said my wife, and Betty will have plenty of time for boys later on. I read a few pages of the book, there was nothing else to do, I didn't expect it to be be my cup of tea, but they got right to the cave drawings, I've always been partial to cave drawings, and it was set in 1918, the year I was born, Austria or Switzerland or some such place, but then they came out of the cave and went back to the boarding school and started giggling and that was enough of that book for me. A few minutes later the director came down the stairs, carrying one of those white bankers boxes, I didn't have any idea she was up there in her office, she must have been working there the whole time. I offered to carry the box for her, it never hurts to make the gesture, and she stopped and looked at me funny and eventually smiled and said no, no thanks, she had it under control. So I showed her the book and she said, Yes, that would be Samantha's, and I put on top of her box for her and asked if she would be locking up at six o'clock because I didn't have any keys. Then she finally put the box down and found some keys in her pocket and handed them to me and said that I could lock up, that would be good, and she picked up her box with book balanced on top and headed for the door, kind of in a hurry I'd say, but I called after her and asked, What should I do with the keys? and she turned and said I could keep the keys, for all she cared, because she didn't work there anymore.
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